“These agreements reflect the high quality of Epanko’s graphite and will underpin final project funding discussions,” Kibaran’s press release indicates.

In order to facilitate the planned production expansion, Kibaran issued 47m shares at USD0.23 to raise USD10.9m.

Kibaran Managing Director Andrew Spinks said the capital raising would enable the company to accelerate pre-development activity at Epanko.

He added: “The raising will also allow us to press ahead rapidly with studies on expanding the plant to capitalize on growing demand from the lithium battery market and the feasibility study on producing battery-grade graphite. This means we will be in a position to increase production and add further value to our product much sooner than would otherwise be the case.”